The Lunar New Year 2025 Flower Market Fair starts a month-long series of weekend festivities and events celebrating the Year of the Snake.
On Jan. 25, 2025, the weekend before the Lunar New Year, San Francisco Chinatown hosted its annual Flower Market Fair with about 100 stands selling fruits, flowers, candy, and more. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce ran the event and will host various events throughout the month.
“There are different parts to it; this one is the Flower Festival, more for celebrating the coming of the New Year and to decorate your houses and buy flowers to get rid of all the bad luck,” said Keaney Chan, a volunteer for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce since 2002.
The Flower Market Fair began with an opening ceremony of lion and dragon dancers; later, they were seen weaving through the crowd. The art of lion and dragon dancing began in ancient Chinese villages where they would clash pots and pans to scare away evil monsters such as the Nian.
Leung’s White Crane Dragon and Lion Dance Association is the martial arts school that developed and trained these dancers to perform in major events and festivals. It was started in 1972 by three brothers who all learned and graduated from Hong Kong in martial arts. They immigrated to the United States in 1972, where they started by teaching at a Chinese school on Stockton Street. When business picked up, however, they opened up their own school, Leung’s White Crane Dragon Lion Dance Association.
“We do martial arts, Dragon-Lion Lunar (dancing), and we do high pole, which you can see on YouTube. I’ve been around with them for 40 years, and we just did our Lunar New Year special with Martin Yan Can Cook airing sometime next week,” said Gary Quan, a long-term participant in the Leung’s White Crane Dragon Lion Dance Association.
As an organization, Leung’s White Crane Dragon Lion Dance Association is an integral part of local events, including the Lunar New Year Parade’s grand finale on Feb. 15, 2025.
“We’ve been doing Lunar New Year for 44 years. We do the street fest one weekend before the Lunar New Year, and we’ll do the opening day on Wednesday with the mayor of Fort Square. This is the only flower fest for people to buy flowers, kumquat trees, paintings, and ornaments to put on their homes,” Quan said.
Regarding actual flowers at the fair, many different stands come each year with various flowers, bamboo, and fruit for the New Year.
Keith Tyran is a Chinese history major who studied abroad and is the guest services manager at Lucky California, one of the suppliers and stands at the Flower Market Fair.
“What I know about the orchids is people are looking for the one that will bloom on New Year’s Day, so they’re scrutinizing each bulb to see if they can predict it will actually open on New Year’s Day because if it does, you have a year of prosperity,” Tyran said.
Other meanings include buying peanuts for longevity, oranges for abundance, and flowers for prosperity, especially the yellow ones that can represent gold.
The whole event is run by volunteers, many of which are student volunteers.
“Yeah, so they usually pull in high school volunteers. They’re a majority of the people that are volunteering. They usually have an announcement that goes out and a social media posting, so it’s better to sign up earlier through the Chamber of Commerce if you want to do it,” Chan said. “And then we’ll also have the people who like doing it. I guess we’ve been doing it for many years. Just want to keep helping out and come back every year.”
